Driving Innovation Through Multi-Industry Ecosystems

Next Generation Communications Blog

Driving Innovation Through Multi-Industry Ecosystems

The second installment of Enriching Communications, Alcatel-Lucent's eZine highlighting many of the hottest topics in communications today, takes a look at how ecosystems and the business models they promote help businesses leverage a collaborative environment to enhance the opportunities for all members of the communities.
 
As editor-in-chief Ruth Killeen writes, "Why work alone when partnerships help mitigate risk in a highly competitive marketplace?"
 
Indeed, ecosystems provide an opportunity for businesses that would have had little cause to work together under traditional business models, to generate added value for the members of a growing number of ecosystems as well as their end users. Taking a deeper look at some of the trends and topics in the LTE market introduced in the previous issue, this iteration looks at how participation in ecosystems helps members create new value from their own products and solutions, while leveraging the expertise of other members.
 
While the ecosystem isn't necessarily a new concept, this is an ideal time to foster long-lasting relationships to help the community as a whole more quickly assess and respond to evolving trends and requirements. Essentially, these ecosystems are the foundation for business relationships between strategic, multidisciplinary companies from a variety of industries, providing an opportunity for them to collaboratively deliver new solutions.
 
Ecosystems increase the value of products and solutions from each partner by offering input and feedback from a variety of members who have distinctly unique perspectives on what users want, what they will buy, and how much they will use new services and products, adding a new measure of predictability into the value chain.
 
Real-world experiences often provide a powerful message regarding products and services. The same can be said for the successes driven by participating in collaborative ecosystems. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, continues to expand its partnerships because of the benefit it has seen from the openness and collaboration promoted by ecosystems. These partnerships, in fact, are a key part of its corporate culture.
 
With the rate of evolution in the communications market, it is more critical than ever for individual vendors to ensure the ability to move equally quickly. Few companies have the resources to successfully respond to changing customers requirements without risking financial stability, making pooling resources and experiences more than a reasonable option - it is becoming a necessity. This article illustrates the success Hewlett-Packard's has seen from membership in ecosystems like ng Connect.
 
Even as many wireless provides are still moving into the 3G world, wisdom dictates that their goal must be to evolve further, to 4G technology, to deliver services with greater quality and reliability. However, the secret is not in merely evolving their networks - they must have a keen focus on the applications and services they bring to their subscribers. They need compelling new services that can cross networks, devices, and geographies - and they must provide enough value so that subscribers will be willing to pay for them.
 
This article looks at how network operators can leverage ecosystems to quickly develop and deploy 4G services, including eliminating risk through interoperability testing in a standards-based environment. By working closely with their partners, operators will increase their ability to grow revenue and market share in an ultra-competitive mobile market.
 
Israeli telecom Pelephone indentified some time what is now common theory - content and applications will be the keys to successfully penetrating the mass market. As such, it knew it had to be able to design new and innovative services for flexible, scalable deployment and rapid launch.
 
By working closely with its ecosystem partners, it is now able to deploy new services in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take. It has also been able to expand and manage its content and application library through simple, intuitive, and appealing interfaces, resulting in what it calls a "stunning user experience," including location-based services, mobile Internet, and multimedia content.
 
A key part of Alcatel-Lucent's market strategy is its application enablement model, which combines next generation network technology with the ecosystem and partnership theory to create more effective business models and greater efficiency in bringing services to market.
 
Earlier this year, Alcatel-Lucent conducted a study to gain an understanding of how various members of the communications value chain might be able to better work together to combine network capabilities with the speed of the Web - a key part to its application enablement strategy.
 
This article provides answers to the questions it was looking to answer, and which will help network providers more effectively partner with content and application providers to create a highly collaborative environment that drives value for both sides and create a win/win/win situation for network providers, application and content developers, and end users.
 
 
In this issue, experts from Alcatel-Lucent, Hewlett-Packers, ABI Research, and Pelephone discuss the need for and benefits of technology ecosystems in a competitive landscape. The next issue will delve into to telecom operators can transform their businesses to create more effective, sustainable operational models.


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